


Anatomy Lesson

by rijane



Category: Moonlight - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-13
Updated: 2010-11-13
Packaged: 2017-10-13 04:40:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/133032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rijane/pseuds/rijane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mick learns that, for vampires, blood and sex can be nearly the same thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anatomy Lesson

Mick kept to the shadows, to the high stacks, far from the dimming California sun, the quiet pulse of people.

He pulled the familiar over-sized book from the shelf. He flipped page after page until he found the one that drove out everything, smell of leather and tobacco loose in his pockets, the cacophony of so many breaths and beats in the background. He stared at the old hand sketches in shades of gray, with the streaks of blue, red behind that. In truth, it was all red, all of it.

“Carotid,” he whispered, repeating the word, shifting his mouth around the sounds. “Inside, outside.”

He knew the easy tear and wet feel of it on his tongue. A pressure beat at his gums as he flicked the page.

Blue and red intertwined, one on another, ranine, dorsum, under over, lingual, linguae. He could slice one, send the sticky salty red over his face and lick it off. Arteries, they sprayed like a warm rain over him. And he wanted. Oh God, he wanted.

Another page gone and the world grew tight. He traced fingers over the glossy page. With a glance over his shoulder, Mick popped a button, hovered a hand and turned another. Vena cava, vena cava. He whispered it again and again until it was the name of a girl outside Trieste, maybe now a woman fat with babies and Mick just a long ago memory of a trembling boy in a barn. He traced the lace of unknown arteries, their red licking at the gray.

A heartbeat tapped at the edge of his hearing, a flash of flesh between the stacks. Mick froze, hand ready to turn. She had Coraline's dark hair and swollen red lips, but full of blood, bursting with it. Her skin lit with it.

She rose on tip toe to pull at a book, she flipped it open, with every movement veins heaving against her peach skin and his body screamed to bite down, to trace that blood with his fingers, his tongue, his teeth. His too-good eyes could see them all – lingual, basilic, illiac, atrium, saphenous. Oh god, saphenous. One hand stroked the page and the other himself. Harder, faster. Mick felt the pressure in his mouth, the desperate thirst filling it with his fangs.

He stared, his cold eyes on her warm body as her insides became her outsides, a ripe raspberry ready to burst between his lips and sweetness dribbling down his lips, his cheeks, lapping at her, licking her clean away. He pumped, no heavy breath from his lungs, a steady beat of hand on skin. He could peel her open and watch the muscles pumping in the deep of her, see the obscene reality of the book in his hands. Wet and slippery and warm and delicious.

He closed his eyes just as he gasped with the final release, a hand ripped the page before him. The woman turned and skittered away, a book tumbling to the ground behind her. She hesitated for a second and Mick knew he could have her before she screamed. But he didn't. He stayed still while her heart beat a retreat toward the old men and children with their new books and bright lights.

Mick tucked himself away with a sticky hand and closed his own book, with its old stains and the smell of him fresh on it. He gave the cover one last caress and disappeared into the shadows.


End file.
